Footnote to my post #281078:
businessweek.com
Excerpt:
Yet employers and unions could make progress even without government action. Employers in France and Germany, taking advantage of laws already on the books, are hiring more workers on short-term contracts. Some 12% of employees at French auto maker Renault work on such contracts, averaging only 31 days, which allows Renault to adjust production to ebbs and flows in demand. Unions at Ericsson, persuaded by management arguments that the company's survival was at stake, agreed to waive longstanding rules that would have required younger, lower-paid workers to be laid off before more senior employees. Ericsson, in turn, gave older employees more generous buyout packages. Other employers, such as Paris technology consulting group Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, have even negotiated packages giving departing workers a cash payment earmarked as seed money to start their own businesses.
At least some European workers are learning to handle job insecurity. Proffice, a Stockholm temporary staffing agency, has seen its business grow an average 50% annually over the past decade. It now has more than 10,000 workers placed in jobs around Scandinavia. Hans Uhrus, Proffice's senior vice-president, says that many younger workers are unfazed by frequent job changes and view periods of unemployment as an opportunity to retrain. "Twenty years ago, everybody who started working expected to retire after 25 years with a gold watch. Now, that's unusual," he says.
But if Europe's labor markets are getting more flexible, many of the jobs they're creating pay lower salaries. Olivier Borie, 32, was laid off last summer by Alten Group, a Paris info-tech consulting firm. Unable to find work, he enrolled in a master's degree program to study strategy and organizational management, taking advantage of unemployment benefits that cover his expenses and tuition. He's optimistic about finding a job after he completes his degree in December. "The big companies aren't recruiting, but the smaller ones, those with 20 or 25 people, are doing better," he says. Even with his new degree, though, Borie says he expects to earn less than he did at Alten. That's tough to swallow. But it might be a fair price to pay for getting millions of unemployed Europeans back to work.
_________________________________ |
